Tales of the Jedi is the new Star Wars miniseries from Dave Filoni, creator of Star Wars: Rebels, The Clone Wars, Bad Batch, and many other animated extended universe canon. While the series will only be six 15-minute-long episodes, it promises to delve deeply into some emotional backstories of one famous padawan and one rogue Jedi.

Filoni described the series with the phrase “two paths and two choices” at a panel for Tales of the Jedi held in May. He went on to reveal the stars of the show will be Count Dooku and Ahsoka Tano. Two very interesting subjects, to be certain.

The series will be told as an anthology. Each character will have three episodes, showing a different part of that character’s life. So, when you might see a padawan learner in one episode, you might see a fully-fledged Jedi in the next. Each Jedi has had exciting journeys. Ahsoka was trained by the Jedi who would become Darth Vader, and Count Dooku was once a Jedi but was then excommunicated by the council. So, there are certainly some incredible stories to be told. With the panel at SWCA having given us our first sneak peek at the show, here is everything we know.

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Tales of the Jedi: The Plot

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Dave Filoni created the series in a mode similar to The Clone Wars. The animation will use the same CGI Claymation aesthetic, and it will look at two of The Clone Wars’ major characters: Count Dooku and Ahsoka Tano. The series will only be a six-episode anthology and follow each character for three episodes apiece. In those three episodes, we’ll see stories from different parts of the characters’ lives.

The episode that Filoni premiered at SWCA featured a baby Ahsoka carried around by her mother. It showed her birth and journey with her mom on her first hunt. It also gives us a first look at her home planet of Shili and some insight into her native people’s culture. As the young Ahsoka becomes more sensitive to the Force, an elder of the village notices, “Jedi, Ahsoka is Jedi.” And we see Plo Koon come to take her away to the Jedi Temple.

There are two other episodes following Ahsoka, likely later in her life, but that is not all the series has to offer. Cute baby Ahsoka is only half of the series. Dave Filoni said this about the stories in the anthology at SWCA: “Some of these are dark.” He continued, “I’m picturing the other shorts, and if I chose to show a Dooku short today, I don’t think we’d be talking about all the cute things in Star Wars. I think we’d be talking about something else. It would be like, ‘Oooh, that was rough!’”

Dooku’s story is inherently a sad one. Even with the bit of information we have about him, we can still assume some things about him. We know that Dooku was once a Jedi but was excommunicated from the order due to his willful, independent thinking and tendency to disobey the Jedi Council. He was also perhaps the only people in the galaxy to see the Sith plot before Order 66. Dooku was privy to much information that the Jedi couldn’t foresee.

Tales of the Jedi: The Cast

Another part of Dooku’s story that we’ve never gotten to see is the time of his life when he was a Jedi Master with a padawan learner. That padawan was, of course, Qui-Gon Jinn. And it’s been confirmed that Liam Neeson will be returning to provide the voice of his old role as the Jedi. It’s also rumored that Neeson’s son might voice the character when we see him at a younger age.

Janina Gavankar showed up at the panel at SWCA to announce that she would voice Ahsoka’s mother, Pav-ti. Fans might recognize her from her voiceover work on Battlefront II. And it’s rumored that Matt Lanter might return to voice Anakin, but again nothing has been confirmed.

Not a great deal of the cast has been announced, and it’s likely the series won’t require that many voice actors. Filoni has said that the style of storytelling that the show takes is one of “tone poems,” meaning that the story will be told more through the images and mood of what’s happening than it will be through dialogue. So the episodes will probably be silent for the most part. But what we see will speak volumes.

The series will also be directed by Nathaniel Villanueva, who was Dave Filoni’s partner in crime in creating Star Wars: The Clone Wars. So the whole series should have a similar aesthetic and a general vibe. Although the storytelling will be a bit different, what we might see could be interpreted as six very emotional episodes of The Clone Wars.

Release Date

Tales of the Jedi will premiere exclusively on Disney+ in fall 2022.